your voice sounds like hospital discharge papers,
like the elevator tone on the top floor of a 20-story building,
like hallelujah at a pastor’s wedding,
like my mother winning custody in october.
i don’t know what love is,
i only know that love is four letters short of it’s synonym, intimacy.
four letters short of fondness, yearning.
i know the human heart beats 115,200 times per day.
combined, we are 230,400 heart beats.
combined, we are traumas,
ten finger nails,
shattered glass in the kitchen,
one hundred baby prayers,
and too many sympathies.
where do you want to leave your scars tonight,
your place or mine?
they can sleep on the couch.
i’ll make eggs in the morning.
i don’t know what love is,
but when my baby niece was bellied in my sister, she was kicking, and kicking, and even when the bruises surfaced,
we called this good.
sometimes love leaves marks to show signs of life,
stomached and not yet born.
like this-
like you.

you're a lot like a thunder storm and I'm the medical building on 4th st. N. taking in car accident victims.
if you look around you, you can see the damage you've done, the trees that have bent over backwards in your direction, and the houses that fell towards you.
there are casualties, and I'm trying to grab the bandages as fast as I can.
A fire is starting in the back patient room, and you're ten feet away.
I have no idea how to respond, so I choose to let the building go, I choose to burn in your favor, I choose to unclench my fist from the bandages.

The days you weren't sick were called holidays.
We packed your things, and moved to the living room.
Play scrabble on the love seats, and jut our jaws out to the long lettered words,
Put them back in place, only a little more droopy
when they sounded sad.

On the days you weren't sick,
We had celebratory radio talk shows talking holy through the cracks in our house.
When they told us about war, we turned the station.
Stayed silent in our own bomb shelter,
Stayed unaware, yet somehow experienced.

On the days your bones mimicked the floorboards in the ways they bent and chipped and creaked,
we packed your things and moved to the bedroom,
the one your mother slept in as a child,
the one our linens grew over to forget the trace of hers.
Your knuckles, neatly overlapping the curvature between your fingers,
Your eyes closed and breath inhaled.
I would count your heartbeats the same way I would count the declining degrees of your temperature:
Each one to be acknowledged, each one to be thanked, each one more than the one before.

The day you got really sick, we did nothing and you sat by the window singing church songs.
Mostly just whistles of oxygen escaping your lungs to let me know you were still there.
You existed only in that spot for a week until we packed your things
And moved to the hospital floor
for people like you.

On the day the nurse brought me flowers and apology letters,
I played scrabble in the living room,
Kept the radio on loud.
I remembered the ways you ached
And how long you had to stay that way
before we got comfortable with the long words and the war stories and finally compared them to our own.

When you asked me about the future,
I don't tell you what kind of dress I'll wear
at your funeral
and I don't tell you it's probably the same one I wore at my best friend's dance recital
in 10th grade.
You picked up a sunflower and twirled it by it's stem and I want to say,
"There. She was doing that on stage. Mid October, her dance recital."
I remember I clapped the loudest.

I asked you a series of questions like what is your favorite type of flower?
Which music hits your heart the worst:
Slow classics or a fast attempt at fitting love into verses?
Remind me again, what was your brother's name?
Did God touch you more than she did?

You ask again about my future,
I tell you about my past,
how I once cut my hair at age six and hid it low in the trash can before Mom came home.
My grandmothers laundry shack and cinder blocks in front.
I tell you I know things about my father that I shouldn't.

You, picking the flower apart now, ask again what I'll be doing in 10 years,
and I reply:
It's a black dress. Please, please, don't make me wear it.

2012: it took me two years to throw your shirt away and forget your phone number. you should know this much. i look at my life now-crooked sentences, shaking hands,-you are not apart of it. i bleed honestly or i don't bleed at all. this is good. this is good.

2013 (march): all i know is the word stay. stay. stay. stay. kind of like a heartbeat. kind of like a story you forget after telling it too many times.

2013 (september): i hope you're okay. i hope you forgot how to spell my name while writing suicide notes. i am still sorry.

2014 (february): i dont remember how to love you. maybe we are okay.

it is 11:26 at night and i want skin to skin contact.
i want your hips and my hips
your thighs and my thighs,
your lips and my lips.
i want parallel lines to be demonstrated with our bodies.

it is 11:27 at night and i suddenly want to know how you move,
how your joints ache, which scars you hide
and which scars you aren't afraid of talking about anymore. i want to know about the collection of bruises you have.
what makes you sigh and which kind of sighes you sigh under bed sheets and how they differ from your sad sighs.

it is 11:31 at night and i have no idea how to tell you that i want my teeth to grasp your lip and my fingers touching the small of your back, the arch in your muscles and your breath.

it is 11:33 and i promise this is not a *** poem.

I had another dream about my soulmate last night
blonde hair shoulder length, warm body, soft touch, impossible to talk down from anything.
she touched me with her hands and her mouth and i can still feel it when i am awake.

her legs, my waist, her fingers, my arms, our love.
it was running through my veins making errands before i could even open my eyes.

when i wake up, i am reminded of my love and how it will be a cross country swimmer some day to fight the distance.
our hearts will swim oceans and maybe they will drown but they will still beat even in death.
i am reminded of his short hair, still with a shining tint of blue from recent change of scenery. i know him.
we cannot touch, we cannot agree, we cannot understand each others habits.

there is over 1,000 people we have not loved yet and one could be blonde hair shoulder length, warm body, soft touch, impossible to talk down from anything.

but now, i am loving him and for however long it may last, i want to love him through it all.